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When it was released last year, the original Kindle Fire's primary selling point was its $199 price. This seriously undercut just about every other Android tablet worth owning at the time, and was enough to make the Fire worth a look despite some deficiencies relative to other multipurpose Android and iOS tablets.

We all know what happened next: Google and Asus released the Nexus 7 tablet earlier this year at the same $199 price, and it bested the Kindle Fire in every way. It was lighter and less chunky; the then-new Jelly Bean version of Android made using the tablet silky smooth, in contrast to the Fire's pronounced jerkiness; and its stock Android installation and access to Google Play made it more broadly useful than the Fire's Amazon-focused customizations.

At the same $199 price, the Kindle Fire HD has many of the same problems as the non-HD Kindle Fire relative to the Nexus 7—the hardware is nice enough, but its customized version of Android makes it slower and less useful by comparison. However, the refreshed version of the original Kindle Fire comes in at just $159—cheaper than the Nexus 7, but is it enough to make the Kindle Fire a good buy for the cash-strapped customer? Or are you better off giving Google the extra $40?

For the sake of clarity: throughout the review, I will be referring to the 2012, non-HD Kindle Fire as the "Kindle Fire." In the cases where I mention the 2011 Kindle Fire and the 7" Kindle Fire HD, I will be more specific.

Hardware

The exterior shell of the 2012 Kindle Fire is essentially identical to its 2011 predecessor, and any cases or other accessories made for the previous device will continue to fit the new one. It hasn't gained or lost any weight or thickness; the power button, headphone jack, and USB port are all in the same places; and the speakers are in the same location and sound the same as the older model. Any exterior differences in the casing between this year's Fire and last year's are minimal, and can only be discerned through very close inspection: the plastic bordering the screen on the new Kindle, for example, appears to be a matte plastic, whereas on the old Kindle it was glossy.

The Fire is heavier than the Nexus 7, but has a similar rubberized back and isn't uncomfortable to hold during long reading sessions. The power button is stiff enough so as to be difficult to press by accident if the bottom of the device is resting on something, which is nice, though dedicated volume buttons are still conspicuously absent.

Enlarge/ The headphone jack, micro-USB port, and power button are still located on the bottom edge of the Fire.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ Two decent-but-not-great stereo speakers are located on the top edge of the device.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The back of the Fire is still rubberized, and it's comfortable to hold in your hand for long periods of time.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The old Fire came with a power adapter, but the new one only includes a micro-USB cable for charging and moving data.

Andrew Cunningham

This means that the 2012 Kindle Fire has the same 1024×600 resolution as the previous device. At 169ppi, it's not as crisp as the 216ppi 1280×800 screens on the Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7, but it's fine for reading. The difference is more noticeable while browsing the Web—smaller text on the Fire can be blocky and difficult to read, while the same text on the higher-resolution Fire HD is clearly legible without zooming.

Enlarge/ The Nexus 7 (and, by extension, the Kindle Fire HD) can view smaller text from a greater distance.

Andrew Cunningham

Smaller text is harder to read (and sometimes illegible) on the less-dense screen of the Kindle Fire.

Andrew Cunningham

Not much has changed on the inside of the Fire since last year. The single-band Wi-Fi, lack of Bluetooth, and 8GB of nonexpandable internal storage are all the same—if you'd like to upgrade any of those, you'll need to look instead at the Kindle Fire HD. The battery life is also comparable—Amazon promises 8.5 hours of continuous use, but six or seven hours is more realistic in practice.

A few things are different, though, but not by much: the 2012 Kindle Fire still uses a dual-core OMAP 4 SoC from Texas Instruments, but clocked at 1.2GHz rather than 1.0GHz. Folks who rooted the original Kindle Fire could easily overclock to this speed, so the clock speed bump isn't much of a stretch. Of slightly more consequence is the 1GB of RAM, which doubles the original Kindle Fire's 512MB—this should primarily allow for more apps to be in memory at once, though it also has the potential to make the new Fire a bit snappier than the old one.

Enlarge/ The Fire and the Nexus 7 are actually not too different in terms of thickness, but the Nexus 7's rounded corners and lighter weight make it feel much smaller.

Andrew Cunningham

Measuring the new Kindle Fire's speed compared to the previous Fire is difficult, though—while the 2012 Fire is running the same Android 4.0-based operating system as the pricier Kindle Fire HD, the 2011 Fire is still running the older Android 2.3-based operating system, and an Amazon representative informed us that the old Fire would not be receiving an upgrade to the new software despite the fact that it was released less than a year ago and has very similar internals.

This is the approach that the company usually takes to updating its E Ink Kindles, so it's not entirely surprising that last generation's products won't receive this generation's software improvements. It's less of a problem on a single-purpose e-reader than on a multi-purpose tablet, though—keeping Web browsers and APIs up-to-date is important for both security and functionality, and we'd like to see Amazon dedicate more resources to keeping at least the previous version of the tablet up-to-date and secure.

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Andrew Cunningham
Andrew wrote and edited tech news and reviews at Ars Technica from 2012 to 2017, where he still occasionally freelances; he is currently a lead editor at Wirecutter. He also records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites